With all the hoohaa going on with the two new cache police members and the archiving of caches from GCA it opens a question to the senate.

GCA is no rules.

That does mean that abandoned or muggled and not maintained caches will remain in the system for ever.

Should we, as a community, lead by our senate, consider an automated method for dealing with caches that should, for all intents and purposes, be archived?

eg.
1 month after a cache is marked as temporarily unavailable, an email is sent to the owner requesting action.
2 months after, a reminder.
3 months after, the cache is automatically archived by the system.
The beauty of GCA is that the owner can at any time, unarchive the cache without permission or intervention by an "appropriate authority".

Another eg.
Same scenario as above, but change temporarily unavailable with SBA.

The first scenario is for active members of the community.
The second would be for caches where the community member may have moved on and has not set the cache to temporarily unavailable.

This is a change in direction for GCA as it would no longer be strictly no rules, but would allow the system to help keep itself clean while still allowing owners to make changes to their cache as needed.

As it's a change in direction, the senate should provide the guidance and governance on these types of questions.

Contributions from people who actively hide / seek caches at GCA will have louder voices in this debate.

Please commence the debate.

06 June 07 12:10 pm

Mix

450 or more roots tripped over

Joined: 30 October 03 9:20 pmPosts: 1399 GCA Found: 34 GCA Hidden: 57

As the owner can reverse the action any time and as there is no proximity rule so a new cache will not stop reactivation I have no problem with any of this. At the end of the day it's not really establishing a rule so much as a process. If possible give people the option to turn off "automatic archiving" for there account, they could still get reminders.

I'm all for "Free and Open" but I think as cache placers we have some responsibility for what we are putting out there.
If a cache has been abandoned by the placer and is in severe need of maintenance what use is it to anyone. In some cases the community will step up but some caches are not worth it.
I think putting something in place to clear out the garbage is the responsible thing to do.
Making it automated will take the heat off our volunteers as well as hopefully giving people an incentive to fix the caches involved.

Regular cachers will police the SBA's and if there is no responce from the owner, then archive them. Further to this, if the SBA message bounces from the registered email account, then archive immediately.

Another proposal:
after X DNFs by X different users it gets a needs repair for X months then if none is forthcoming it goes up for adoption on a first come first served basis then after another X months its then archived if no adopte steps up.